


In Memoriam

by CatalenaMara



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2315774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalenaMara/pseuds/CatalenaMara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor adds Loki’s emblem to his vambraces in “The Avengers” but removes the emblem in “Thor: The Dark World”.  I wrote this story from Thor’s POV dealing with these decisions.  The story grew to include:<br/>-	his memory of when Odin tells him the truth about Loki’s heritage<br/>-	memories of Loki from their shared past<br/>-	that odd moment in “The Avengers” where, after he escapes the Hulk cage he looks at Mjolnir as if he’s no longer worthy to pick her up.<br/>-	His thoughts at the end of “Thor: The Dark World” both before and after his meeting with “Odin”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to my betas [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/profile)[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/%20Muriel_Perun%20/)**Muriel_Perun** and [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Tenaya/profile)[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/%20Tenaya%20/)**Tenaya** ; you rock!  
> Here’s the [post](http://audreyii-fic.tumblr.com/post/59296624535/geekmehard-while-surfing-around-the-thor-tag-i) that inspired this story.

Thor woke abruptly. His eyes snapped open. And still the images clawed and ripped at his mind.

Eyes closed or open, it mattered not. All he saw was Loki’s white face in the darkness. The agony in his brother’s eyes. Those long strong fingers opening. Letting go. The blank stare as he fell.

Thor had screamed – but there was nothing – NOTHING – he could do as his brother disappeared into the Void, falling past the point where nothing survived.

Again, the dreams came. Days and nights and days again; his dreams and his every thought filled with that one moment in time. That moment, powerless to change his brother’s death, wildly desperate to know what had occurred during his brief exile to Midgard, of how things had gone so horribly wrong.

Of why his brother had gone mad.

He knew now.

 

He screamed and howled as Loki fell. Turned, staring in shock at his father’s face.

“What happened? I was on Midgard for a few days only!”

Odin was staring into the abyss, not looking at him at all.

**“What happened to Loki to make him go mad?”** Thor grabbed his father’s shoulders and roared, **“WHAT HAPPENED?”**

Odin’s gaze snapped to his face and yet he was still looking through him, beyond him. Without speaking a word his father wrapped one arm around Thor’s shoulders, turned him from the darkness, turned him away from the shattered edge, turned him toward Asgard, and walked him along the Bifrost. Beneath their feet juddering lines of energy spewed out, bright white and flashing colors shot through with ever-increasing rivers of darkness, spilling into empty space.

There were people approaching and still Odin gave him no answer, though he paused to give orders in a granite-steady voice. Reaching Asgard itself, and still silence. Then, finally, Odin spoke.

“I will speak with the Allmother. We will speak with you in the morn. You will be sent for when we are ready.”

Thor dropped Mjolnir. The impact shook the ground as his father walked away. He nearly roared again, nearly ran to lay hands upon his father, to shake words out of him, to demand answers. But there were no answers, and at last he remembered he was a prince, and there were crowds of people all around him staring at him in curiosity and concern, those who were not surging toward the land’s edge to stare at the broken Bifrost.

He pushed through them, while his thoughts raged and paced and grieved and howled. He did not meet the gaze of any, for all he now saw was a white face, disappearing into blackness. Over and over and over again.

When the morn came, after a night without sleep, a night spent struggling against the fierce urge to hurl lightning around the realm and bring down rain enough to drown the world, a servant arrived at his chambers mid-morning. The servant directed him, not to the main hall, but to the receiving chambers where supplicants came to beg for boons. His parents sat there on twin thrones. His mother, her hands clenched so tightly against the arms of the chair they dug into the metal, sat as cold and still as a statue, her face frozen into non-expression, her eyes barely moving. She met his gaze once, and not again.

Odin, who suddenly looked a thousand years older, spoke in his King’s voice, the voice that could order the execution of a former friend without the slightest hesitation or trace of regret.

And Thor, his father’s words clawing his guts to shreds, felt grief and disbelief and rage, foul combatants to drive him into further depths of pain.

“In the aftermath of the battle of Jötunheim…”

The words piled up, landing like blows, cutting like knives, slashing and cruel.

“…abandoned, small for a giant’s offspring… left to die…”

Worse than blows or knife wounds. There was nothing to fight.

He kept grasping for meaning, kept on denying the lie, because surely none of this could be true.

“…Laufey's son…”

How could any of this be true? Loki? A Jötunn? A **_monster_**? Was any of this real? Had he been poisoned and was now dreaming vile dreams? Had some powerful sorcerer cast a spell and sent him into a nightmare world, and all he need do was wait for Loki to rescue him and laugh as he put the other’s power to shame?

But his mother’s eyes were like those of a trapped animal, even as she sat in dignified silence, and that, more than his father’s words, gave truth to all these lies.

He called for mead after hearing Odin’s words, great casks of it, and drank them all and demanded more. Like a snake coiling through grass, like worms writhing through dead flesh, horror and disgust and revulsion roiled through him at the knowledge that beneath his brother’s skin lay a monster. He found himself collapsed on the floor, and every tale he had been told, of the Frost Giants, their treachery, their vile natures, their devouring of children, every vivid image in his mind from the tales he had been told had come back to him. Now, all the monsters bore Loki’s face; all the monsters directed the Destroyer to slay him.

He roused once to find Sif and Fandral and Hogun and Volstagg sitting around him, faces grim. They offered him counsel and forgetfulness, then drank with him in silence when he roared at their words, then left him alone when he demanded it. He drank himself back into a stupor, and when he had wakened again, stomach clenching, head pounding, and found his friends had returned he warned them off again, fist clenching Mjolnir, electricity crackling around his chambers.

He fell back into an uncertain sleep and saw Loki looming over him, many feet taller than Thor himself. Loki grasped Thor’s hands with ice blue fingers which branded his skin with lines of frostbite. Again he awoke gasping, again he dreamed, and Loki’s crimson eyes gleamed as he raised a dagger and buried it in Thor’s chest. Again, he confronted Loki in the Observatory, but as they fought Loki’s flesh rotted away and exposed blue skin rather than the white of bone. Dozens of Loki’s duplicates surrounded him, dozens of Jötunn forms laughed and jeered at him.

Then Loki reached out with black-nailed hands and hurled him from the Bifrost.

He awoke with tears on his face and the memory of his younger brother, a small child again, cuddled against him frightened by a bad dream, and how he had promised him, over and over again, he would keep him safe from all the monsters.

He awoke again when the sun rose on the next day, the second day after Loki’s death. Sick from drink, he had taken to the mountaintops and brought the lightning down in lands where no one lived.

And when he tired again, of destruction and of weeping both, he sat down on the mountaintop beneath a lone tree he had spared from the lightning of his fury while all else he’d burned to the ground. There, he thought of nothing for a time.

There, he calmed. And remembered.

Loki had loved the mountains. Loved the cold pure air. Loved the way the land fell away from the heights, down and down, forest-cloaked, veined with streams and rivers and waterfalls, down and down to the golden city below. Loved the currents and pathways of the air. Loved to take the form of birds and fly, giddy with freedom.

He saw again:

Loki, eyes bright with pleasure, standing with Thor on a mountaintop, black hair whipping in the wind. Thor challenged him to a race, calling on Mjolnir to pull him from mountaintop to mountaintop while Loki, falling into bird form, flew with sorcerous speed, then slowed to sail more slowly on the air currents. He’d darted around Thor almost lazily, bird eyes gleaming with confidence and provocation, then flew away again at breakneck speed to their chosen goal.

Loki won the race. Thor had landed at the chosen spot, granite cracking beneath his feet. Loki was leaning in a casual stance against a great boulder, grinning in pleased victory. Thor had been convinced it had been one of Loki’s doubles, but his brother had seized him in an embrace, and laughed at Thor’s shock in finding him real. They’d held each other tightly for a moment, Thor’s arms filled with the hard warmth of his brother’s body, and then Loki had let him go.

Loki, laughing, still a child, running across a meadow, proud of his new illusion, a school of bright orange fishes with extravagant fins flying through the air around him.

Their hunting trips! Stags of legend, and dragons so ferocious realms trembled before them, and common bilgesnipe – they had been victors over them all, and many had the trophies been that they had brought back home.

Their adventures and quests to other realms, their battles, Loki always at his side. The many times Loki’s magic, his skill with daggers, skills that Thor had so often belittled him for, had saved all of their lives.

Loki, grinning in gambling halls as he made extravagant wagers, won fabulous relics, lost fjords-worth of gold. Once, Loki lost even his freedom for seven years, bound in servitude to an elf to follow him in a quest to dark worlds beyond the Realms. However, Loki had returned strangely pleased with himself, and it was observed by many from that day forth his magic had increased in power.

After those years in servitude were over, however brief a time they had been, Thor would have guessed Loki would never risk such a loss again. But Loki was always Loki; mere days after he returned he was back in the gaming halls, making outrageous wagers, winning and losing equally before suddenly becoming bored and disappearing into the library for nearly a year. When he had emerged he had gone off on a quest for some sorcerous relic at the further bounds of Yggdrasil. He’d been gone for ten years that time, and then returned triumphant in his success with what appeared to be a simple dun-colored stone which one of the seiðkonur had told Thor, when he asked her, that it contained but fitful sparks of magic. It seemed barely worth all his trouble and he told Loki so. Loki, smiling, had told him he would never understand.

Loki’s years, now gone forever.

Thor’s mother came to him then, and laid her hand upon his arm. He could only bear one look at her before turning away, gutted at the sight of her grief-stricken face. Still turned away, that she might not see his own face, he allowed her to lead him back home.

 

Standing at the end of the broken Bifrost, Thor stared down into the void, where Loki had made his final journey without the protection of a funeral boat to carry him safely into infinity.

Unfamiliar weight pressed into his forearms. His new vambraces were the same shape, the same heft, as his old ones. And yet different. His fingers traced the new pattern: the image of Loki’s helmet expertly carved into the metal. The armorer had done an excellent job. He had thanked him. His words had seemed to be at a distance from himself, but he knew the right ones to say. He laid his hands against the pattern, feeling the carving, then pressed harder, ready to brand his flesh with these lines.

He would wear Loki’s emblem always, in remembrance.

_Brother, if I had known, if I had understood…_

Would it have mattered, in Loki’s madness?

_If I had been by your side when you discovered the truth… If I had seen what you saw, on_ _Jötunheim_ _… Could I have helped you understand you were still my brother, no matter your blood?_

_If my folly had never taken us to_ _Jötunheim_ _…_

And there was guilt and there was rage and there was grief and there was regret, and there was fury at all the lies. So many lies he knew naught how to deal with. Father’s lies. Mother's lies. Loki had learned well, indeed.

Did that make everything a lie?

Brother.

Monster.

Brother.

How could he feel so much, his very thoughts in conflict with each other, a combat that threatened to destroy all that he remembered?

He knelt at the Bifrost and stared into the abyss. The Void gave him no answers.

Mjolnir was in his hand, but there was nothing left to protect and nothing left to destroy.

Nothing.

He pulled in deep breaths, hands cradling his forearms, pressing tight against Loki’s image.

Tears ran down his face. “Brother…” he said to the silence. “I would do anything to have you back.”


	2. Chapter 2

Thor leapt to his feet, shaking off Midgardian soil, the explosive sound of the shattering cage reverberating in thousands of impacts of metal and glass. **“Coward!”** Thor screamed to the sky. **“Honorless **Jötunn**** ** _nithing_!”**  Just like the rest of those filthy, treacherous monsters.

**“Coward!”** he shouted again, eyes seared with the image of Loki stabbing the valiant warrior the Son of Coul in the back. Loki’s fingers hovering over the control panel. Loki, looking at him consideringly, then pressing the panel. The sudden fall - air screaming around the cage as it flipped end over end, hurling him against its glass sides. Mjolnir in his hand, striving again and again for the right angle to strike. Then escape, seconds before impact.

He pulled in breath, wild with fury, imagining his brother as he had never actually seen him: blue-skinned, crimson-eyed, those disgusting markings on his skin, as evil as his alien kin swarming in their ice burrows.

He clenched his fists, seized with a craving to wrap his hands around Jötunn throats, to hurl Mjolnir through their vile bodies. How easy it was, to hate the frost giants. How good. How right it had been, killing them, wading through their blood and guts, their bodies littered everywhere, and him, screaming his victory to their darkened skies.

He shouldn’t have let Father stop him. He should have killed them all, every treacherous one.

He turned to orient himself, looking for Mjolnir. And there it was, settled into the meadow, cradled in Midgardian plants, awaiting his call. He reached out his right hand and –

_I will slay all the monsters._

_We were raised together… We played together… We fought together…_

Jötunn monsters. After Father had shown them the Vault they had talked of nothing for days. They retold the tales they had heard many times over the years - of the glorious battles father had fought and won, of the great prize he had found on Jötunheim, the prize they had now seen with their very own eyes. How the strange blue colors had roiled inside the Casket of Ancient Winters as they listened to Father tell of what the Jotnar did to Midgard. Heard how, without the Casket, Jötunheim would be forever in fealty to Asgard. As was right. As was good.

His stomach seized with helpless disgust as he remembered Loki’s game.

_Norns. Loki’s **game**_.

Mjolnir lay before him. He paused as he tried to reach for it, suddenly uncertain if it would obey him.

Loki’s bright eyes, his mischievous smile. “Brother, I’ve thought of a new game. Bring your practice sword.”

Loki always came up with the best games. There they were, children again, forbidden to go too far into the woods. So of course they heeded not this instruction and each time Loki led him further in, or led him to different places, secret caves and bright meadows where no one else intruded. There Loki showed him new tricks and illusions – miniature fire drakes soaring through the air breathing flames. Bilgesnipe the size of pigs, which they hacked to pieces with their practice swords.

Today, it was not bilgesnipe.

That day, fresh with father’s tales in their ears, they’d gone out to a favorite clearing. Loki’s eyes had gleamed as he’d conjured images.

Jotnar. Terrifying beings, ugly mouths full of fangs, wicked cruel horns jutting from their skulls, glaring hatefully at them from enormous crimson eyes. Their sapphire bodies were taller than Father, and their skins were adorned with broad black stripes. Parts of their bodies were still unformed and blank, since neither of them had ever seen a Jötunn or even an image of one.

Thor and Loki took their practice swords and slashed the images to pieces.

Loki’s idea of what Jotnar looked like didn’t exactly match how Thor envisioned them, but it was close. Close enough to the tales told by their nursemaids and guards. Though never by Mother or Father. He thought of that now. Neither Mother nor Father had ever told them those tales, of the monsters who stole and ate children.

Thor gloried in besting the terrifying images. It quickly became their favorite game. Loki found books full of images and words about Jötunheim and used his new knowledge to improve his workings. His illusions got better with the years. More detailed. More real.

So real that their swords - real swords once they became older - ripped apart Jötunn flesh and tore through Jötunn bone, Loki’s long-practiced illusions now solid conjurings. So real that the stench of the spilled blood and guts of the bodies that mounded around them lay thick in their nostrils.

Loki practiced his new combat techniques on his illusions. Thor derided him when he used them publicly in combat practice, while secretly admitting the way Loki could move around adversaries like swift-flowing water, the way he could precisely place a well-thrown dagger, was quite effective.

The end of their game was always the same – a mountain of hacked-apart Jotnar corpses heaped around them.

How he had laughed - how Loki had laughed - triumphant with every false victory. Then Loki would conjure the images away, stink and all, and make them both clean. They celebrated their victories with weak beer while telling each other of their mutual prowess, spinning the tales like the sagas they heard their elders tell.

How many times had they done this, over the years? They had given up these games when, as men, they had gone into true battle, and yet Thor remembered the triumph he had felt in those early days, the pleasure he took in striking the evil Jotnar down, to hack them apart and laugh at their deaths.

Thor stood staring at Mjolnir, his hands clenched tight, his stomach roiling with nausea.

Loki, centuries ago, standing atop an illusioned Jötunn body. Loki, grinning in triumph as he hacked off its head. Loki, so very young, still a small boy, saying, “When we are kings we will slay **_all_** the monsters.”

Thor stared at his hands. What if his skin turned suddenly blue before his eyes? What if he looked in a mirror and saw eyes the color of blood staring back at him? What if his entire life had been a lie? What if his parents had deceived him in such a way? What if he were not Aesir? What if he were monster?

What if he had listened to Odin’s words and lost father, mother, brother, all at once?

Could he have had the courage to face what he was?

Or would he have gone mad?

Loki…

Thor pulled in deep breaths of Midgardian air heavily scented with the abundant plant life around him and tried not to think. He did not know what to do with this ugly confusing knot of emotion. He saw Mjolnir and for an instant wanted to use it to shatter something – anything – to rid himself of this ugliness. He thought of how he had called it to his hand when he had confronted Loki on the mountaintop, ready to strike without holding back.

_Not worthy._ A thick twist of shame coiled in his belly.

Loki’s pale face before him. “I remember you tossing me into an abyss.”

Lies. Or madness. He had thought either possible, when Loki had said those astonishing words.

Had Loki not the right to his madness? Would he not have gone mad himself, faced with the same monstrous truth Loki had had to face?

How filled with joy he had been, when they discovered his brother still lived. How filled with sorrow he had been, when they discovered the extent of Loki’s disorder, his madness.

“Loki, I will find you. You are still my brother, no matter your madness. I will make this right. I swear it. Mother will find a way to cure your madness. I will bring you home. All will be well.”

Mjolnir leapt into his hand and lightning crashed from the sky.


	3. Chapter 3

Thor strode along the Bifrost, trying to rid his mind of Loki. Yet, no matter how fast he walked the image stayed with him: Loki, in his prison cell, still manacled, still muzzled, awaiting Odin’s pleasure as to when he would be released from his bonds. But Loki needed not his voice; his eyes spoke for him. Thor did not want to think of the rage, the pain, the pride, the scorn, in the gaze Loki had trained upon him before he turned and walked away.

He paused just before he reached the Observatory. He intended to talk to Heimdall about the battle plans, about the most strategic place to land on Vanaheim to take their new enemies by surprise.

But the sight of the internal scarring of the bridge stopped him. He looked down at the place he had struck with his hammer; at the place where everything had ended and then begun again, and his life had changed completely. They would none of them ever be the same again.

The place where the brother he had known had died.

The shimmering cracks where the mending had taken place threaded through the crystal beneath his feet. The bridge had been coaxed by powerful magic to grow out to its former length by the best of Asgard’s seiðkonur and now had become strong enough to support the rebuilt observatory.

He rested Mjolnir against the bridge, allowing it to touch what it had destroyed, and stared into the Void.

Was that a moving speck he saw, a white face, disappearing forever in nebula cloud and darkness?

_Were you always a lying monster and I never saw it?_

For an instant it was as if he were back on Stark’s tower facing Loki. When he’d begged his brother to cease the destruction he had thought he’d seen something in Loki’s face - a desperate, hunted, haunted expression. Had that been a tear at the corner of his eye? But then Loki’s lips stretched into a mirthless smile, his eyes hardened, and suddenly a stabbing searing pain erupted in Thor’s side.

Fury engulfed him, anger at the betrayal, anger at his belief that his brother still lived, still existed in this monster, this Thing that even now tumbled over the side of the building, escaping him. That moment when he’d thought he’d seen the glint of a tear in Loki’s eye - yet another lie!

All lies.

The destruction of so much of that great Midgardian city – the dead humans, the destroyed buildings, the wreckage everywhere he looked –

He sucked in a breath, and the knot of emotion seething in him settled into something hard, cold, and unyielding.

Loki was lost to him.

There was nothing left of the brother he loved. He had to accept that.

His brother was dead, and in his place a demon wearing Loki’s face and form had emerged to taunt him.   This snarling madman who wore his brother’s face deserved his fate.

He would never look on that face again.

There was work to be done. Marauders were invading the realms. He would lose himself in battle, his friends at his side. He would not think of the thing his brother had turned into. He would not.

He tore the vambraces bearing his brother’s emblem from his arms and threw them into the Void where his much loved brother had died. And walked away.


	4. Chapter 4

Thor landed in the Observatory and strode without hesitation to the Bifrost. In moments, he would be at the palace, where he would confront Odin. Would his father’s sentence be execution? Exile? He knew not, but he was ready to face Odin’s judgment. He would argue in favor of his friends, who, though they had willingly accepted the consequences when they agreed to follow him in his plan to defeat Malekith, did not deserve execution for their work, or even exile. They had saved the Realm Eternal. Surely Odin would see vengeance had been served, Asgard was once again safe, and all involved had accredited themselves with honor.

_Even Loki._

Thor paused on the Bifrost for one more instant to see how well the crystal was healing itself across the gash of the break. Most of the interior cracks and rutilated portions were gone, healed by the energy now flowing smoothly across the bridge. If he had merely glanced, not taken a close look, he would not have known that anything had ever marred its perfection.

But nothing could erase the events of the past few years.

Memories crowded in. The weight of Loki, dying in his arms. His last words, his stammered apologies.

_Loki had saved Jane. Loki had saved him. Loki had sacrificed his life to destroy the Kursed._

Thor rubbed his fingers over the blankness on one vambrance.   Grief tore at him again, now that all was done and the Dark Elves defeated. Now he could think and feel again.

The grey damaged skin of Loki’s dying face filled his vision for an instant, and blind with grief he sought for happier memories.

_We played together. We fought together._

_We hunted together._

A sudden memory filled him. Alfheim. A desperate plea from the Royal Family to rid them of a rokh, immune to elf sorcery, which was seizing and devouring their children.

Thor flew to the pinnacle of the mountain the giant bird had chosen as its own, his left arm tight around Loki’s waist, Loki’s arm tight around his shoulders, their bodies close together. Bright sunlight splashed over the craggy granite formations, which formed a half-bowl-shaped depression. They landed. Loki found his feet, hand trailing across Thor’s back as Loki stepped forward. A vast nest, taller than a man’s height, filled most of the area, its sides a tangled mass of tree trunks and branches, padded with sheep wool and skin stripped from the hides of various animals. They’d scaled the nest and found three eggs inside, each nearly the length of a man’s body. Beautiful as gems, they gleamed in jewel tones of turquoise and tangerine and amethyst.

There were sounds from inside the shells, minute cracks forming.

Thor circled, scanning the sky for the rokh, then turned back to the nest. “We must destroy them before they hatch.”

Loki reached out in a complex gesture. The motion inside the eggs ceased. “They will never hatch now.”

A screech, like to the sound of the collision of rock beasts, drove spikes into his ears, and he and Loki leapt aside an instant before scimitar talons, longer than the lengths of their bodies, raked the air where they had been an instant before, tearing through the branches of the nest.

Thor leapt away. A tip of one of the rokh’s talons, sharp as Loki’s best daggers, slashed at him, slicing through his vambrace, opening up a gash the length of his forearm. He leapt up and away, swinging Mjolnir at one clawed foot, missing by an inch. As big as a young dragon, the enormous gold-and-bronze bird wheeled and came in again to attack, its shadow darkening most of the pinnacle where they stood.

A flash of green and gold sorcerous netting surrounded the creature and sunk into its feathers. The rokh screeched, the sound like great sheets of metal scraped together and jerked back, inches away from seizing Thor with its talons. It flapped and hung in the air, struggling against invisible bonds. A dagger flashed, hurled so precisely it cut straight through the back of one extended leg. It howled in pain, jerking its wounded leg up. Breaking free of the sorcerous net it dove, aiming the talons of the other foot directly at Loki who was standing in plain sight at the top of its nest.

Mjolnir flew true this time. As the rokh’s talons slipped through Loki’s illusion and ripped through the nest Thor’s hammer struck, shattering muscle and bone and brain as it tore through the bird’s head. Gouts of blood rained down. The rokh’s body, still in flight, crashed into the pinnacle and stuck there for a moment before sliding down in a mess of bronze feathers and gore.

Thor, laughing, embraced Loki as he emerged from where he’d hidden behind the nest. Rokh blood had spattered over both of them and the wound in Thor’s arm was still bleeding freely. Heedless, Loki hugged him tightly and stepped back. Bright sunlight poured over the peak, and everywhere the world fell away around them in cliffs and forested folds, down to the beautiful land below, now free of this peril. Breathing in the cold pure air, gaining back their strength, they grinned at each other, sharing the glory of the kill.

Gusts of winds scoured the pinnacle, whipping Loki’s ink black hair around his face, his eyes bright, a triumphant smile stretching his lips. Loki had never looked so fiercely alive as at this moment. With a shout of triumph Thor embraced him again. Laughing, Loki crushed him close. They held each other for an instant, the gold and black of their hair mingling together.

Then Thor let go. “Come, brother, and celebrate. A great feast awaits us below.” He drew Loki close, lifted Mjolnir, and flew from the peak, touching down lightly by the royal palace gates.

They accepted Alfheim’s accolades that night. Both told tales of their bravery and the battle and the death of the rokh. Loki composed a heroic poem and all who listened applauded wildly. Elven bards, too, composed ballads of their prowess that very night.

And, for all that Thor knew, they were sung to this day, and Loki still celebrated as a hero, though Alfheim knew all too well of his other deeds.

_Ah brother,_ he thought. _It was good in those days. The quests, the hunts, the battles._ And even when Loki withdrew, lost in his books, or went off on some solitary quest of his own to hunt and find magical artifacts, Thor had not missed his company, because there was always amusement to be had, and Loki always returned.

_Loki always returned…_

Never again. Still, he could not quell a rising emotion, a feeling much like joy. Loki had died with honor.

That knowledge would sustain him in the face of what was to come.

He did not hesitate. He left the Bifrost and walked swiftly to the palace, ready to meet his fate.

 

The audience with his father had not… gone as he had expected.

He walked along the Bifrost toward Heimdall and the observatory, away from his father, away from Asgard, perhaps for many mortal years to come. All burdens had fallen from his shoulders. His Father had set no penalty for his treason. He had no obligation to take up the kingship, a position, he now knew, for which he was unsuited. He had no reason to stay in Asgard. Jane awaited him.

He had expected exile at the very least. He had anticipated execution. He had been ready for whatever judgment Odin chose for his fate.

He had not expected his father to meet him in love and understanding.

Not after his defiance. Not after his treason.

He had not thought to be gifted once again with Mjolnir. He had expected to be stripped of his weapon, and had willingly offered her to his father, though the making of the offer unsettled him deeply.

He was overjoyed Father had come to his senses. He had feared that Father, overcome with grief and hatred, had lost all wisdom in his willingness to needlessly sacrifice countless lives in pursuit of revenge. At that moment, he had understood even more fully the lesson Father had taught him when he’d taken him and the others back from Jötunheim. The choice had been clear - usurping Father’s place by taking this decision from him had been the right path.

He had expected Father to still be enraged upon his return, furious about this betrayal. Instead, Father had finally recalled the lesson he had once taught Thor.

_There will never be a wiser king than you,_ he had said to his father once. And now, his father had claimed those words false by praising Thor’s wisdom above his own and offering him, once again, the Kingship.

Rejoicing, he knew his original statement was true. Odin was once again the father Thor had always known. He need not fear for the Realm now. He might never be King, much less a great one, but he was protector of the realms. Now he had the freedom to seek his own life.

And, he need no longer grieve. Loki had died a warrior’s death, valiantly in battle. The final burden on his shoulders, now fallen away. His brother was not lost to him.   He had long feared that if he lost his brother to death he would lose him forever.

That was no longer true.

If Father had pronounced sentence of death upon him; if the ax had been brought forth and he had knelt to meet his death, he and Loki would already be reunited. Instead, Father had heard his words. Instead, Father had listened when he spoke with pride of Loki’s sacrifice, of his brother’s regained honor.

Now the Norns would decide the place and time. Whether his death happened soon or thousands of years in the future, he and Loki would be together again.

_Loki, I wish I could tell you how proud I am of you._

But it did not matter if he could not do that now. That chance would come.

“You died with honor, brother,” he said. “I will meet you in Valhalla.”


End file.
